


The Coordinate

by medium_garlic



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/F, F/M, Long-Haired Eren Yeager, M/M, Memory, Mystery, Near Future, Romance, School, Secret Relationship, Secret Societies, Slow Burn, Smut, Startup, Switch Eren Yeager, Teacher-Student Relationship, Tragedy, University, With messy love pentagons, everyone is a TA, jean is a rich boy, serious plot, startup AU, subtle references to season 2 spoilers, tech au, think spicy sci-fi thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:20:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 14,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28743132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medium_garlic/pseuds/medium_garlic
Summary: College AU. Levi is an entrepreneur-turned-professor, teaching computer science at a prestigious university. Eren is the TA with a few screws loose. Hange is the best friend/crush you won't make a move on. And you—well, you've got issues, and there's a chance that what you know about Levi's AR/VR startup and the new campus dating app, Coordinate, only scratches the surface.Updated every week (I do my best).-“Maybe it was the whole look—the unbranded, all-black sweats, the long hair framing his heart-shaped face, the wide green eyes, the way he never smiled. Then there was his voice—boyish and lightly rasping, like he'd been yelling. If you ever needed to come up with evidence for pretty privilege, this was it.”
Relationships: Eren Yeager/Reader, Hange Zoë/Reader, Levi/Erwin Smith, Levi/Reader
Comments: 16
Kudos: 61





	1. Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic on Ao3, and my first fic since I was maybe 14? Shingeki no Kyojin is an amazing work, and as it reaches its completion, I wanted to write the kind of [character] x reader romance that is faithful to the themes that made us fall in love with the original story in the first place. I know it's a bit unconventional to write an /reader fic in first rather than second person, but I felt like this was more natural. *Note: this fic is rated M for later chapters. Hope you'll enjoy this story.

"Let me tell you something strange," the professor said, closing his laptop.

"What is it?" All around us, the office seemed the grow closer. I will never forget what he said to me then, hurriedly, fearfully, looking straight down at the carpet.

"I have these visions, these waking dreams. But it feels like the time in between is the real dream. It's like we've all met before, a long time ago—or was it far in the future? There is so much violence. I am leading children to their deaths. I lose someone dear to me. I feel like I am stuck in the moment of collision, about to be thrown through the windshield, a moment that lasts forever. Through the glass, I can see everyone running towards me, and they're smiling at me with tears in their eyes. And then suddenly I am here, and maybe I am giving a lecture or sitting right here in this office...and I remember it all like little more than a childhood sunburn."

I wanted to dismiss it all as just the thing he said it could be—a bad recurring dream, the kind that lingers in wakefulness. But it didn't seem like that at all. 


	2. Daze

He looked more like the kind of emaciated stoner who'd belong in a 4000-level poli sci seminar, not this 8:40 AM Intro to Computer Science lecture. His mouth was a thin, straight line, like he was always forgetting something. His hair was parted down the middle in a cartoonish display of military-like fastidiousness, but I wasn't fooled. I knew the bags under his eyes, dark as two spoonfuls of blackberry jam, couldn’t be from studying, because he was always the last one to turn in his exam.

I spent half the spring semester of my freshman year watching him. Maybe I liked the way he looked, or maybe I just needed something to get me through those 90 minutes. Week after week, I sleepwalked into lecture at 8:41 and sat in the back row with him, separated by two chairs. We never spoke, although I wanted desperately to ask why he was handwriting his notes in a computer science class. And there was something familiar about him that I couldn't place.

Two years later, I enrolled in a graduate-level machine learning course with Hange, who was my freshman year roommate, but is now someone I would make a marriage pact with if I believed in the barbaric institution of marriage. And if I were maybe strapped for cash.

Hange had a lot of problems, and none of them financial. The winter break soon after we met, they flew home to Austin to beg their dad on their knees for his permission to study math and computer science, rather than inherit the family oil business. Honestly, I didn't see the problem. If Hange wanted to become a quant and make a shit ton of money in a slightly different way, why did it matter?

If Hange could survive college without any financial support, they could study whatever they wanted. Hange's old man probably thought that'd be the end of it, but what he didn't know was that Hange had a secret stock portfolio they'd been growing since they were sixteen and they'd made some pretty solid bets on a cryptocurrency that rhymes with shitcoin in late-2016. The truth of how my roommate went from American blueblood to nouveau riche came out over a plate of fire chicken ramen after a long night out, and that was the moment I became sure of our lifelong bond.

People like Hange weren’t uncommon at an Ivy—privileged, outrageously smart, and more than a little self-absorbed. I met a lot of them, but none were really _like_ Hange. Hange wore glasses that were more like goggles and was the kind of person who went to office hours to ask the TAs obnoxious questions that they genuinely wanted the answers to. And I was pretty sure I was in love with them. Probably since the first fire chicken ramen, I wanted them. Maybe even more than an internship at Google.

It was warm for January, and we showed up to class early, knowing there wouldn't be enough seats in the ancient lecture hall for all 200 of the masochists in the class. The room was already buzzing with activity and quickly filling to capacity. It was hard to ignore the chatter of the overachieving underclassmen who were probably going to die on the waitlist. They were talking about the professor—a hotshot VR entrepreneur who'd retired last year at thirty-five, taking a multi-million dollar exit to return to his alma mater and teach ML to a bunch of pimply nerds.

Someone walked in through the doorway to the left of the chalkboard. We were up in the nosebleed section, so it was hard to tell. But standing at the front of the lecture hall, having scribbled his name on the board with pristine handwriting, was none other than stoner boy. When he spoke, his voice was soft, like he wasn't used to raising his voice.

"My name is Levi Ackerman. I go by Levi. I also go by Ackerman. At TitanBase, they called me Captain, which was a little weird, but I'd answer to that, too. However, I'll say this now, and only once: do not call me 'Professor.'"

I squinted at him hard over my laptop. There was no mistaking that it had been he who sat next to me in that introductory computer science course two years ago, in the back of the lecture hall looking like he’d crawled out of a frat basement with a raging hangover. It was the same Levi Ackerman I now realized I had seen in the Wall Street Journal and Forbes. Here he was, and I could only think about how he seemed shorter than I remembered.

"Augmented reality and virtual reality are at the frontier of consumer technology, and machine learning lies at heart of their most ambitious applications: social networking, health, education, gaming—even warfare,” he continued, addressing the crowd. “You're here, I'm guessing, because you believe that it's our duty to explore beyond the limits of what we know, even if—no—even more so, if it is frightening." He smiled.

"But also, of course," he said wryly, "You need to take this class to graduate."

-

I told Hange I needed to stay back to ask a question about the lecture.

The line to ask bullshit questions just to trade air with the millionaire professor went from the podium all the way to the back of the room. I waited in the back for everyone else to go. It was golden hour, and the sun sank into the wood finishes of the room. When my turn came at last, the hall was eerily quiet. The sounds of students leaving afternoon classes were far away now, just an indistinct echo through the dirty windows.

For a moment, we looked at each other. Or rather, he looked at me. He wasn't mysterious, he was calculating. He moved with intention, because nothing surprised or disturbed him. I no longer felt the sun on my back, only the mechanical scrutiny of his gaze. It was neither warm nor cold, as if to say, "imagine what you will about me, and I will be that man."

I thought about how he had answered each student patiently. How he had come back to this place I couldn't wait to leave.

"Hi Profess—Levi," I began. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You just did."

"Right," I said, fighting the urge to die right then and there. "Don't take this the wrong way, but did you take Professor Latkin's Intro to Computer Science class in Spring 2018?"

"Are you asking me...if I took an introductory CS class two years ago?"

I laughed nervously. "I mean, it does sound crazy. There's probably someone at this school who looks a lot like you and was really struggling with object-oriented programming."

He propped an elbow on the podium and rubbed his smooth chin with his hand, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. I caught the smile before it disappeared behind his hand. "I do look pretty young, don't I?"

He wasn't wrong.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"Uh. Y/N."

"Y/N, you wore the same hoodie to class the entire semester." He gestured at his chest. "A little on the nose for an engineer, don't you think?"

"So that _was_ you!"

"I was auditing the class, taking notes on teaching methods and observing students. I had known I was going to sell the company for a while by that point, but I was having second thoughts about what I was going to do next. I didn't know anything about teaching, but I remembered Latkin from when I was here fifteen years ago and thought maybe it was time to do some hands-on research."

"So you knew you wanted to come back and teach?"

"I got tired," he said. I mean, he really looked like it, too. "I started wishing I could go back to making shitty puzzle games on Flash like I did in my teens. Then I realized I could do the next best thing, which is become a professor and make young people suffer in real life.” I couldn't tell if he was joking.

His phone vibrated then, and when he read the notification, he picked his bag off the floor, packed up his laptop, and put on his long, gray coat. "I'm not a busy man anymore," he said, "but today happens to be the one day I actually have something to do after class." He surprised me with his smile of apology. It brought warmth to the sharpness of his cheeks, his sunken eyes. Even the bags under his eyes turned pinker.

"Oh," I said, scratching my head, feeling myself turn pink, too.

He put on his long, gray coat. "I'll walk you out."

I followed him out the door. I'd always hated the walk back from class on winter evenings, feeling the darkness like an endless pool in those long minutes from the classroom to my dorm, where Hange would already be ditching homework to play Ps4. But with Professor Ackerman—Levi—up until his parting "see you in class," I didn't notice that we hadn't said a word, and I didn't feel very cold at all.


	3. Mythology

It's either everyone or no one attends the office hours of a famous professor. The dowdy PhDs who were highly regarded in niche fields certainly weren't filling stadiums, but Levi—babyfaced, millionaire Levi, who didn't know any better—scheduled two hours of Thursday morning to greet the masses, and the entire engineering school showed up.

When it was finally my turn to walk through that heavy wooden door, I caught a glimpse of the sourest face I imagine a human being could make.

The professor, who was hunched over his laptop, tugged at the collar of his cable knitted sweater. Like everything else he seemed to own, it was gray and starting to pill, which I didn't expect from someone of his tax bracket.

“I’m guessing you’re also here about Pset 1?" he said tersely. "You know, it’s not due for another week.” When he looked up, he looked a little surprised—maybe even apologetic—and he reached up to rub the knot out of his neck.

I cleared my throat. "I would've thought they'd come with questions about, you know, the unicorn startup you founded while you were here."

“You'd think that. But it’s like none of these kids read the syllabus anymore,” he muttered, leaning back in his rolling chair. “Everyone’s trying to get ahead on this assignment that involves material I literally haven’t taught yet. The TA’s don’t even hold office hours ‘till Week 2.”

“You thought this teaching thing would be easy, huh.” I sat in the chair beside him, which had been lowered so close to the floor, I had to look up at him. I didn't like myself for thinking it, but I felt like it was probably intentional.

"I don't remember being this insufferable. I kept to myself and procrastinated until the last minute for all my assignments, like God intended."

"Oh, I'm sure you had your fair share of office hour visits."

"Yeah. To hit on the hot TAs, obviously."

"That kind of thing still happens, you know. That's why the lines are so long."

"Don't worry. The TAs I hired this year are top notch, and therefore exceedingly plain." I made a face. "I'm allowed to say that," he explained, "because I was a TA once, too."

I felt like that wasn't super politically correct of him, but I wasn't going to say anything to defend people who barely showered. “Anyway. Not here for the pset,” I said, fiddling with the strap of my backpack.

"Glad to hear it. I'll remove your name from my shit list." He glanced around briefly, as if actually trying to find a pen. "One second." He grabbed the collar of his sweater with both hands and pulled it over his head, bringing the layer beneath up with it and exposing the flushed skin of his back. There was a beauty mark to the right of his spine, a hand or two above the waistband of his jeans. I heard the pop of static as the wool separated from his white cotton shirt.

He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, neatly folded the sweater, and laid it on the desk.

"Y/N?"

I looked down. "Yes?"

"You were about to say something."

I stole a glance. He was looking at me with the same neutrality that seemed to pull me into his universe, like an inkblot. In my peripheral vision, I saw his hand on his desk move ever so slightly, his long, pale fingers lifting off the table. At that moment, I believe, I realized that I thought he was beautiful.

"I wanted to know how your first week has been."

He blinked in surprise. I watched him turn his back to me to start the electric kettle sitting on the windowsill.

"Are you trying to be my friend, Y/N?"

I laughed. "Only if you want me to be."

We waited in silence for the water to gurgle, then hiss, then shut off with a click. "Alright," he said simply. "Then let's have some tea."

He smiled as if we were sharing a private joke. Which, of course, we weren't.

-

The next time I came by, and every time after that, he had tea waiting for me, although it was always cold by the time I remembered to drink it, and way too bitter.

He talked about how he'd actually loved the classic literature he had to read for one of our required classes, and how some of them inspired TitanBase's early games. But then they started getting attention from prominent angel investors, who got them in the good graces of interested companies who wanted AR for online shopping, training simulations, telemedicine, you name it. After those took off, they landed some government contracts, and that pretty much solidified what everyone thought was going to be an earth-shattering IPO. That never happened, of course.

Every day, I wanted to ask him why he really decided to sell the company, to one of the tech giants he said he hated, no less. I wasn't satisfied by his initial answer, that he was simply too burnt out to birth a publicly traded company and deal with all the SEC bullshit and shareholder scrutiny that came with it. But I didn't have the guts.

That was how things went for half the semester. I always knocked on his door in the final thirty minutes of his biweekly office hours, and there would be tea for me.

"You need to be able to solve this in constant time, Y/N," Levi groaned, looking at me with unconcealed disgust. "Come on, this is like beginner's Leetcode." On a particularly depressing Thursday evening, he was drilling me on what were supposed to be intermediate-level interview problems to prep me for the hell that would be recruitment season in a couple weeks' time.

"I am so glad you are helping me," I deadpanned, deleting the entire method I had written.

"And stop chewing your lip like that—Jesus—"

Ah shit, I thought, tasting blood. Before I realized what he was doing, Levi was pressing a Kleenex to my bottom lip, close enough for me to smell green tea, warm and faintly earthy, on his breath. "Let's start from the beginning," he said softly. "I'll show you just this once, so you better pass your first round interviews."

There were many moments like that, where I couldn't help but think of closing the distance between us—to veer off the highway at eighty miles an hour, just to see what would happen.

-

Two weeks before the first midterm, he told me about the day he started the company with his best friend from college.

Erwin Smith might as well have been the school mascot. He was the people's favorite, a down to earth overachiever. He was a dark horse Rhodes finalist, but wouldn't be caught dead in student council. He seemed to have everyone in the palm of his hand, and that's exactly where they wanted to be. Meanwhile, Levi looked like he was sleep deprived and vitamin D-deficient.

They were freshman year roommates like me and Hange, except they hated each other's guts. Erwin went to bed at ten and woke up at six to run to Central Park, rain or shine. Levi popped caffeine pills to code late into the night, playing his shitty music so loudly through his headphones, Erwin could hear it under the covers. When he wasn't ruining his eyes, Levi was bringing girls back to the room to smoke weed out the window.

In the school's underground wiki, there was no trace of recorded ill will between them. Maybe it was because pride wouldn't let them go past passive aggressive remarks. But it was noted that their room was famous for unsuccessfully drowning out the sounds of loud sex with Kendrick Lamar, which everyone assumed was Erwin's fault, since there was no way Levi could make anyone scream like that unless they were running away from him.

It seemed like a pretty big leap from archenemies to co-founders. I asked Levi when exactly things changed between them. Maybe it was when they were paired up for a group project in Algorithms III their sophomore year, and coded the entire thing while day drunk in a frat basement on Homecoming. Maybe they'd always secretly admired each other. After they won their first hackathon together, the rest was pretty much history.

Or maybe, he said, it was the dreams.

"What dreams?" I asked him. He was silent for a while, turning his college mug around and around in his hands on the desk. There was nothing in it, just a cold tea bag and the residue of Earl Grey at the bottom.

I sat beside him, my own cup in my hands. This time, it felt like we were sitting too close.

He leaned in then, slowly, his eyes washing over my eyes, my ear, my mouth. It felt like an eternity, like he was making a decision. But he just leaned back in his chair.

"I'll tell you if you score within the top ten percent of the class on this midterm," he said smugly, crossing his legs.

I thought for a moment that maybe I should be happy—a professor openly daring me to be one of the best in his class. But whether it was because he thought it was possible, I wasn't sure, and it pissed me off.


	4. Stagger

I thought it was as good a time as ever to go to office hours.

Not Levi's, of course. If I was going to take on his challenge, it had to be without his help. But not even I would skip out on OH before an exam. Hange, who had been MIA for the last two weeks to build a college-wide matchmaking app for a "literary society" with cash to burn, finally had a Monday evening to spare and tagged along.

"Dude, I feel like I haven't been seeing much of you," they said, handing me a coffee filched from the grad student lounge. The lights on college walk blinked on as the sun set behind us. "Where are you always disappearing off to? Surely not office hours, you overachiever, you." My jaw dropped.

"You're one to talk, you pungent code monkey. You're always holed up in that coke den they call a frat house. I forgot what you looked like."

"I'm reinventing love on campus, Y/N," Hange said, clutching their chest in feign agony. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"Actually, I'm only going to OH today because I'm infatuated with a TA," I said, swooning. I looked up at the graying sky. It was going to rain, but I didn't have an umbrella. Hange's face lit up.

"Who? Who?!"

"I'm obviously joking. I hear the TAs are below average this semester."

Hange cough-laughed. "Might as well turn around, then. Who told you that?"

"Levi."

"Ah. First name basis, already?"

I swatted them with my free hand. "If you'd been paying attention on day one, you would know the man _literally_ told us he wouldn't answer to 'Professor.'"

"I mean, you could've called him 'Captain.'"

-

Our engineering building was built in the '50s, "renovated" to look like concrete Swiss cheese in the '80s—as was considered fashionable at the time—and then named after a type of insect, because it happened to share the name of a very generous donor. Forgive me for not being so enamored with the bleak windowless-ness of its basement TA rooms, scarcely large enough to hold a tea party, let alone the fifty procrastinators that tended to visit each evening.

Hange and I arrived just in time to snag the remaining wooden desk-chairs by the door. Three TAs were lined up in front of the blackboard, waiting for the firing squad.

"Hey guys," said the one in the middle. He was on the shorter side, with longish blond hair. "I'm Armin, the head TA. I know you guys posted in the forum that Pset 4 was more challenging than usual, so I'll be going over some of those problems before we head into general review. Does that work for everyone?" The crowd collectively muttered its approval. "Great," he said, picking up chalk.

Armin went through five of the problems in fifteen minutes. By the third, he'd convinced me he was by far the best underpaid teacher at this godforsaken school. His explanations lacked any ambiguity, and he answered questions without a hint of condescension. As he went on, I noticed the others standing around him, who were basically waiting for orders. One of them was helping Armin draw diagrams on the board. She had forgotten to take off her scarf even though it was like eighty degrees in the room, and it was already powdered with chalk dust. The other, tall with sandy brown hair and a strangely equine face, looked visibly exhausted, but seemed to be eyeing the door.

"For the remaining hour and a half, we'll be splitting up into four groups and reviewing the most important concepts from the homework," Armin said at last, setting down the chalk and pointing to the side of the room opposite me. "Mikasa will take people over here, Jean in the middle, and," he pointed seemingly right at me, "Eren will be over there."

"Four groups?" Hange asked, looking at me quizzically.

At that moment, the door burst open, slamming against the wall. Standing in the doorway was a rain-soaked boy with green eyes and disturbingly good posture. He was combing impatiently through his long dark hair, holding an elastic between his teeth.

"Shit—" he said, dropping the elastic, and the room snickered. He picked it up off the floor and pulled half of his hair back into a mess of a bun. He brought the sleeve of his black hoodie up to his face and wiped the rain from his brow.

"Eren," said scarf girl, "where have you been?"

"Don't worry about it," he said, taking a seat next to me. He peeled off his dripping winter coat and threw it over the back of the chair, failing to notice it fall immediately. He wasn't carrying anything else—no bag, no umbrella, nothing.

Armin cringed. "You look like you're ready to teach."

"As a matter of fact, I am," said Eren, somehow without an ounce of mischief. He looked right at me. "Well?"

What?

"Got questions?" Eren asked.

Hange cut in. "Uh, hello, _Eren_. You're the one who's supposed to be leading this review session."

"Oh." He blinked. He looked around his seat, then back at me. "But I don't have my things with me."

I stared back at him. I searched his eyes for just a glimmer of irony, and found none—I could find nothing at all. Just pure, unclouded green, the color of earnestness...

I looked away, feeling unsettled.

Armin ended up giving him a list of concepts to review and a corner of the blackboard to use. When he got down to it, Eren wasn't a terrible TA, just a very confused one. He could only become one if he'd been one of the top scorers in the class last semester, so why did it seem like Armin needed to explain breathing to him? Was he clueless, or just distracted? Was he bad with people, or just bad at being polite?

Armin, Jean, and the girl, Mikasa—they all seemed to give him a pass for his strangeness. Mikasa, in fact, must've been his mom, the way she eyed him like she was prepared to catch him if he fell. The others laughed at his weird moments, but still seemed to take him seriously. 

Maybe it was the whole look—the unbranded, all-black sweats, the long hair framing his heart-shaped face, the wide green eyes, the way he never smiled. Then there was his voice—boyish and lightly rasping, like he'd been yelling. If you ever needed to come up with evidence for pretty privilege, this was it.

"So, that's the TA you're in love with, right?" Hange said, grinning. I rolled my eyes.

"It'd be beyond unfortunate for anyone to fall for him," I said, watching him snap a brand new piece of chalk in half from applying too much force.

"He probably fried his brain playing too many games," Hange said, shaking their head. "I've seen it happen to many fine men."

And yet, here we were, watching him closely, taking notes and hanging on his every word.


	5. Dusk

"We're launching it next week."

"Launching...what?"

"The dating app. It's called 'Coordinate.'"

"As in, (x, y)?" I asked. "Not 'coordin-ATE?"

"It's both—a play on words. Funny, right?" Hange looked at me expectantly.

"I don't know enough about the app to get the joke," I said.

I was scrubbing the crusted-over sauce from our stove. We had a good lottery number for housing this year, so we lived in a two-bedroom suite on the fifth floor of a brownstone whose easterly-facing windows overlooked the river. It was pretty absurd that two sorry excuses for adults like us at had views in New York City at this rent, but I guess that was one of the only perks of being in college.

"It's an anonymous public forum within the university," Hange explained. "You post about your crushes, and they might be someone you know, or a stranger sitting across from you at the library."

"How is that any different from those confession groups on Facebook?"

Hange beamed, like they'd been hoping I'd ask. "It's anonymous, but you'll get some clues. First, some vague bits of info that they choose to disclose: things like height, year, gender, major. Second, their approximate location at the time of the post."

"That last part is kind of exciting," I said. "Kind of like a scavenger hunt. But what about posts where no one gets tagged, and it's just a description?"

"Other users who recognize the description can tag the person and help out the poster. Otherwise, we use natural language processing to scrape the post for identifiers and notify everyone in the poster's vicinity who matches them, causing utter chaos within a 50-meter radius. It's amazing. My best work yet."

I told them it sounded like it would be become infamous in weeks. They thanked me.

So I went to the launch.

The literary society known as the Garrison has been around since the 19th century, originally founded to serve as the guardian of the university's thriving literary culture, attracting classics majors, writers, and critics. Naturally, the Garrison has instead become the home of the ultra rich who fancied themselves poets and tastemakers, commissioning all manners of pet projects. This year, it was Coordinate.

The Garrison had tried and failed over the past decade to restore its old "secret society" intrigue, sadly unable to resist throwing a high-profile party every Homecoming and an invite-only trip over spring break. The President, known only as Hitch, was a manic pixie dream girl type who treated her depression by throwing lavish parties and handpicking commoners to sponsor. I'd never spoken to her, but Hange assured me that she was crazy.

They owned an old brownstone with walls the color of absinthe, oak finishes, and a crystal chandelier in what used to be a grand sitting room. The rugs, once beautiful, were faintly stained from years of spilled drinks. Someone had actually gotten a fire going in the fireplace, in front of which sat a group of society members in black tie, passing a joint. A jazz quartet played by the grand piano in another corner of the room. A massive gargoyle, which I heard had been stolen from the roof of the library, squatted by the wall of portraits of past society presidents.

Hange was probably the preppiest-looking engineer I knew, so I wouldn't have been surprised to see them in a suit. I _was_ , however, not prepared for the perfectly tailored tuxedo, the fuck-you watch, and the gleaming designer shoes. Their bat wing eyeliner came to a dramatic point, and their brown hair, normally pulled back in a ponytail, now fell to their shoulders, gelled back from their face.

Hange caught me staring and grinned. "I clean up nice, don't I?"

"You make me feel like a princess," I said, trying hard to sound sarcastic. Cackling, they hooked their arm through mine as we made our way to the bar.

Hange introduced me to their friends in the society who eagerly came over to talk to us—to Hange. While they never officially pledged, Hange had known many of the members even before arriving at university from holiday parties, summer camps, and private schools growing up. None of them questioned it when Hange showed up to members-only networking events or brought a plus-one. No matter how goofy they seemed to me, there was no doubt they belonged here.

At nine, pink-haired Hitch teetered on a cushioned stool at the front of the main room and clinked her empty glass. The music came to a clean stop. Hitch's white satin dress fell to her bare feet and hugged her ample curves, the slit exposing her tattooed thigh. "Hello, all," she said, slurring a little. "Welcome to the Garrison. We're so glad you're here with us to celebrate the public launch of our newest project, Coordinate. We've been invite-only beta testing for a couple months and got great feedback, so we decided it was time to open it up for all to use!"

There were cheers and applause from the audience.

"Of course," she went on, "none of this would've been possible without the tireless effort of our wonderful lead engineer, Hange Zoe!" She gestured to Hange, who smiled coyly and took a dramatic bow to more applause. "Would you like to say a few words?"

"Yeah. Download it." Hange raised their glass high, then chugged it. The crowd cheered.

"You heard it. Now have a splendid evening," Hitch said, nearly falling off the stool as she came down.

-

I don't want to admit that I had a nice time socializing with all these rich people, but I did. They were very generous with the weed.

Hange and I lounged on one of the the plush sofas with Hitch, some other upperclassmen members, their dates. Among them was the first familiar—and the most surprising—face of the night, Jean Kirstein the TA. He looked pissed, sitting alone with his legs crossed, looking straight into the fire.

"I'm a huge fan of yours, Hange," said one of the girls, leaning forward flirtily. Her face was lightly pink from booze and excitement.

"I wouldn't be," Hange replied, laughing. "But I'm flattered."

"Being an entrepreneur is my dream," she went on. "And it's so cool that you're launching something this successful while still in college. What inspired you to take on the project?"

Hange thought for a moment. I saw their eyes dart to Hitch, who looked up from redoing the clasp on her bracelet. Hange tucked a stray blonde hair behind the girl's ear. "I did it to save the poor, lonely souls at this horrible college. Do I need more justification than that?"

I watched Jean get up wordlessly and head toward the stairs, looking like he had somewhere to be. I guess he did give me rich-boy vibes, but I wondered if he actually lived right here in the Garrison.

Someone had finished rolling the next couple joints and was offering them to the group. Hange lit theirs and passed it to me. I took a nice, long hit and downed the rest of my drink. "I'm going to get some fresh air," I said, putting a hand on Hange's knee. They looked relaxed, which was rare for them.

"Text me if you decide to go home," they whispered, smiling.

More people had arrived after ten, and the rooms on the first floor were packed. I weaved around the swaying guests—or was I the unsteady one?—lifting my dress to avoid getting stepped on. I didn't think. I just climbed the stairs, ignoring the fact I was now trespassing. Frankly, there was nothing mysterious at all about the way Jean had left the party, so what was I doing?

It was mostly dark in the corridor on the first floor up, which made sense if most of the residents were downstairs. But while the sounds of the party had disappeared below me, I heard heavy bass coming from the end of the hall, where a red light spilled out beneath a door.

I heard a male voice yelling. Another responded. More yelling. Then, the door swung open and Jean walked out. His bowtie and the top two buttons of his shirt had come undone, and he looked like he was about to cry.

The door was still open. The bass-heavy music rang in my ears as I peered inside.

It was the barest room I'd ever seen. There was no bed frame, just a full size mattress sitting on the floor. There was a small wooden desk against the opposite wall with a single HP monitor, backlit keyboard, and mouse. The only decor was the strip of LED lights taped around the ceiling. Sitting on the bed was a boy with half his long black hair pulled back into a bun. He rubbed his eyes under his thick black glasses.

As he went to reach for his laptop, he saw me standing in the doorway and his green eyes widened, but he quickly composed himself. It was Eren—the TA. He closed his laptop.

"I think you're lost," he said, getting up. As he did so, I noticed the silvery gleam of a TitanBase headset—the clunky, first gen model—beside his pillow.

"I guess you could say that," I said. I figured there wasn't any point trying to make excuses.

"If you're here for Jean, he doesn't live here anymore. But you don't seem like his type." He moved closer, keeping his hands in his pockets. "So, what, you got tired of the party downstairs?"

I stood my ground, though I realized I only came up to his shoulders. He looked down intensely at me, as if challenging me to say something to introduce some normalcy to the situation. We could stop this now, go back to what we were doing before and pretend this encounter never happened. But my mind was still fuzzy, and he didn't stop moving towards me, and he smelled incredible...

"What if I told you I needed help with midterm review?" I said, finally offering him a way out.

He cocked his head. "Sure, if you want."

That was not how that was meant to go. "No," I said quickly. "I was kidding."

"That makes more sense," he replied, in the strange way he did without a trace of irony. "I've graded your projects. You're a good student." My jaw dropped at this comment. “You're Y/N, aren't you?"

"I am," I stammered. "But—"

"Want to see what I've been working on, Y/N?" The intensity in his eyes was back. He walked back to the bed and opened the laptop, beckoning for me to sit with him. He reached behind his neck to unclasp what appeared to be a necklace, but he held a tiny black flash drive in his hand—what I realized was a key for two-factor authentication—still strung on the metal string. This guy was serious about whatever he was keeping on his machine, but I guess he was fine showing a random girl who wandered into his room.

I guess I was waiting for some kind of big reveal, but I didn't get one. He opened his IDE and ran the code. On his screen was an iPhone 11 preview with the words "Coordinate" running across it in changing colors, along with "Log in" and "Sign up." It was just the app.

"I built this," he said. I looked at him blankly. "Well," he said, shrugging, "I guess I only did about thirty percent. Had to do things Hange's way. But Hange's way is really buggy, and that's what I'm fixing right now."

"Why weren't you down there, then, celebrating the launch and taking credit for your work?"

He looked at me dead in the eyes. "You really think I belong down there?"

"I mean, you're living in the Garrison. Aren't you a member of high society?"

He shook his head. "This is technically Jean's room, but he moved out. Didn't like the way Hitch ran things in the house, and practically lives at his girlfriend's place anyway. He still shows up for the events so he can still say he's a member—he's a legacy and all that. Since the room's been empty for a couple weeks, I've been using it as a place to crash."

"Don't you have your own place?"

He winced. "Yeah," he said. "But I'm hiding."

"From who?"

"From my friends. I'm avoiding them because they're worried about me. They don't get what I'm trying to do here. Jean's letting me stay here, but he doesn't approve."

"Is that why he..." I trailed off.

"You saw that?"

I didn't answer. He looked annoyed for a moment.

"So," he said leaning towards me with childlike interest. "Do you like him?"

"What?"

"Levi. The professor. Do you like him?"

"Where's this coming from?"

"You're not struggling in class," he said. "But I don't know anyone else who goes to Levi's office hours more than you."

"Maybe I get good grades _because_ I go to office hours," I said. “That aside, are you gonna explain how and why you know that?"

"I'm a fan of his," he said. But it didn't sound like it. Eren fixed a line of code and ran it before quitting the IDE, removing the key, and closing the laptop. 

I searched his face for clues, watching him return the key to his neck. I thought I'd always been good at reading people. But I was losing track of this conversation fast, getting distracted by the smallest of his movements. The dizzying glow of the red lights, the smell of what must've been Eren's shampoo, the music he'd been playing, which suddenly seemed way more seductive than it did moments ago—I found myself staring at his lips, watching them turn up at the corners.

"Hey. Y/N," he said softly, his face nearing mine. It felt like he was reaching into my brain and pulling out my thoughts to mold them like clay. "I know we don't know each other, but if you're not up to anything tonight, and you don't have anyone waiting for you downstairs..." He brought a hand to my waist, hesitating for just a moment before touching with his fingertips. The fog of anticipation clouded my thoughts of Hange. Slowly, he caressed down to my hip. I leaned into him as the thin satin fabric separating my skin from his melted away under his warm touch.

I couldn't resist. I sighed helplessly as his lips, impossibly soft, met mine as he brought his hand to my neck, bracing me. The music seemed to get louder as his tongue explored my mouth. When I closed my eyes, I could still see the red tint of the lights behind my lids.

"Hold on," he said. I watched him get up, walk over to the door, and close it. With a smile, he removed his glasses and threw them on the desk. He pulled the hoodie over his head. The black key swung back to his bare chest as his hands found me again. He knelt at the edge of the bed where I still sat, sliding his hand under my dress through the high slit. The black fabric hiked up around my thigh as he pulled my hips closer.

"Can I?" he asked. I nodded, and he planted a kiss on my inner thigh that ended in a bite, sending shivers across my skin. He placed a finger against my clit through the fabric of my panties, feeling wetness grow as he gently circled and stroked, like he was writing his name. I heard him sigh softly as I closed my eyes at the sensation. He brought his mouth between my legs, engulfing my lips in warmth, and sucked.

"Stop teasing me," I begged.

He pulled my panties down and threw them behind him. I had no time to react as he began to lick, holding up the skirt of my dress with one hand and lifting one of my legs in the other. Hungrily, he circled my clit with his tongue, and I felt him slip one finger, then two, inside me.

"Do you like that?" he breathed. I moaned as his fingers fucked into me over and over, and my desperation grew.

"Levi wouldn't do this for you," he said, licking his lips. He looked up at me through his lashes. "You're just a student, after all."

I didn't have time to process what he'd said. He stood up, reaching into his sweatpants. He pulled out his cock, huge and swollen to the point of bursting. He opened a drawer in his desk and grabbed a condom. He handed it to me. "Put it on for me," he said, rubbing my bottom lip with his thumb as he stroked himself.

Eren watched me unwrap it, then groaned as I unrolled it slowly over his entire length. Impatiently, he repositioned me on the bed before taking my mouth with his again, melting my thoughts. As he came up for breath, I ran a hand down his perfectly contoured abs, already tacky from sweat. God, he didn't seem real. He looked down at me and smiled innocently, then slid all the way inside me.

I couldn’t help but whine as he fucked me slowly and deeply, never bothering to remove my dress. When I got louder, he smothered my moans with his lips, flushed red now and sweetened by my own taste.

"Your turn," Eren said, flipping us over. He pulled the elastic from his dark hair, letting it pool around his head. He slipped the straps of my dress down and kneaded my breasts while I rode him, the pleasure mounting as I rubbed my clit against him. He brought my hand to his lips to kiss and lick my fingers before bringing it down to his neck. "Choke me," he whispered.

I tightened my hand against his neck, closing off the vessels carrying warm, red blood under his smooth, beautiful skin. He whined as I grinded harder and faster, his eyes pleading, becoming more and more distant, lost in pleasure. Watching this boy I'd only seen for the first time just a week ago, normally so aloof and so clueless, utterly at my mercy, brought me over the edge. I felt the warmth of my orgasm wash over me and moaned as I tightened around him. My grip on his neck loosened and I slowed my pace, leaning down to taste the sweat beading under his jawline. I sucked the skin hard.

"Oh god," he gasped. I felt him swell inside me. He jerked his hips up and pumped into me erratically from beneath me. "I'm close," he whispered, gripping my thighs, reaching so impossibly deep inside me. I placed my hands on his chest as he closed his eyes and shuddered, his cock twitching violently as he came for what felt like minutes.

I felt his heart race under my palm, then gradually slow. At last, his eyes fluttered half- open. He reached for my face and pulled me down for a long, deep kiss.

"I hope we didn't ruin your dress," he said into my ear.


	6. Sentence

"Let's say you wanted to start your own company," he said quietly, twirling my hair with his finger.

"I do, actually," I replied, though half-asleep. "Someday." It was sometime in the small hours of the morning. Stillness had long since settled over the house, the guests having danced themselves out and gone home for the night. We were lying together, naked under his sheets, having fucked what must've been more than four more times before passing out. His skin was warm to the touch.

"I thought so," he said, brushing his lips against my jaw, my cheek, my ear. I wondered if he treated all his hookups with this much tenderness. "Who would you do it with?"

"Hange," I said, without hesitation.

"Because they're a decent engineer?"

"Because they're my best friend."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Startups have lived and died by the bond between co-founders. It needs to be someone you can trust with everything you have."

"Right," I said, sleepiness threatening to overtake me.

Eren pulled my head gently to his chest. I listened closely to his heartbeat, and felt his next words sink into me.

"What would you do if they were gone?”

-

The midterm was hard. I doubted a B was higher than a forty. If Levi wanted to strike fear into our hearts, he definitely succeeded.

Still, I felt I'd prepared more than usual. Aside from the launch at the Garrison, I hadn't set foot outside the library in the last two weeks. It wasn't just about proving anything to Levi, it was about ridding myself of all these half-truths about the people in my life that all of a sudden threatened to converge upon me. So if anyone was going to ruin the curve this time, it was going to be me.

My eyes had met Levi's as I turned in my exam. He had given me an ambivalent smile that revealed nothing, which made me wonder if he was even rooting for me this time, as a teacher or as a friend.

Walking out of the lecture hall, I could think only of my parting exchange with Eren.

"Will you be coming on Tuesday?" he'd asked me. It was nearly two in the afternoon, and I knew I needed to get back before Hange asked questions. To my surprise, Eren handed me one of his hoodies and a baggy pair of sweats. "To office hours, I mean."

"Thanks," I said, taking the clothes—I guess I'd underestimated his capacity to be tactful. His scent engulfed me as I dressed myself. "But surely you're not thinking of my academic performance at a time like this."

"Maybe I just want to see you again." He raised a brow. "Thought that was obvious." It was hard to take him seriously while he was standing there still completely naked, like it didn’t occur to him to be self-conscious.

I excavated my phone from the sheets and handed it to him. "Fair enough.”

"Don't abuse this," he said, typing in his number. "I'm off the clock after nine."

I laughed, shooting him a text with my name. I knew I'd be back.

It was hard to just turn around and leave. Memories of last night flooded back all at once: the kissing, the biting, the moments where his breathing quickened at the sensation of pain. He had done something to me. I didn't hesitate to make him suffer. But even when he was beneath me, even as he begged me to use him for my own pleasure, had I really been in control?

As we stood in the dim light of his room, it was I who had my back to the door, crumbling under his gaze. I tried to remind myself that he was clumsy, barely capable of handling people his own age. Too aloof to join the party. Too scared to face his friends. He seemed to me like a prince locked in his tower. But I couldn't meet his eyes.

As I looked around the room—anywhere but at him—a silver gleam on the floor by the mattress caught my eye. I bent over and picked it up. It was the first gen TitanBase equipment I’d seen when I first walked in here.

He took it from my hands just a bit too quickly. "It's just a piece of junk," he said. "I mess around with it, sometimes."

"Never bothered with the upgrades?" I asked.

He turned the headset over in his hands, studying its well-worn parts. It was missing those famous gloves, thick and burdensome enough to be called an exoskeleton, which would connect to the back of the head with long, retractable wires. At the time of its release, it was the only VR rig of its kind on the market, with motion tracking and positional awareness that was so superior it was called witchcraft; we were eight years old, then. Even now, post-acquisition, it has few competitors in its weight class. TitanBase had called it "Omni-Directional Mobility gear,” ODM for short.

"Hard to believe he built this just a year or two out of college. The original was much rougher than this and barely worked, but still..." He was talking about Levi now. I remembered the questions that he'd asked me, which I'd taken as off-color teasing when we were swept up in the heat of the moment.

Did I _like_ Levi? I wasn't sure if what I felt was admiration, intrigue, or attraction. I was drawn to him in part because it was obvious he was hiding something. But then again, so was Eren. So was everyone. Was it wrong of me to be a little afraid of all these secrets?

"You did say you were a fan of his," I said. "I guess you could say the same for me."

"I lied," he said, returning the ODM gear to a drawer in his desk. "Though it's true I once felt that way about him, I just get this bitter taste in my mouth when I look at him, now. "

"What changed?"

"It's just what happens when someone you idolize ends up disappointing you." He studied the screen of his phone, which lit up with the lighthearted welcome screen of Coordinate. "I just never thought I'd end up meeting him in a place like this."

-

Leaving Eren's room that day, I downloaded the app on my phone.

I wanted to think that what Eren meant was that he never imagined he'd be a TA for a class taught by Levi. But there had been an absent look in his eyes that reminded me of the professor on the days where he was a little quieter, a little more distant.

Maybe it all came back to Erwin: the man who was one half of TitanBase. I hadn't thought much of him until Eren's question as we lay in bed together.

Erwin Smith had been dead for years; everyone knew this. Killed in a car accident at twenty-eight, right before TitanBase raised its Series C. The ODM rig had already proven itself on the market, and there were even talks of the company going public.

Erwin's sudden death, however, made the investors uneasy. Then, Levi went radio silent for a little too long. Highly anticipated releases rolled out that year as usual, but for four years after that, nothing followed. And then the acquisition was announced. It wasn't the most exciting story, but it was the accepted one.

Soon after the midterm, I found myself sitting in Levi's office again. Somehow, that night with Eren made me realize the distance between me and the professor that I'd managed to ignore. We drank tea from the same kettle, tasted its bitterness together, but I couldn't be certain we were in that room at the same time.

"Have you heard of this new app called Coordinate?" I asked him, breaking the lull in our conversation. Already, most of my friends had it on their phones and were checking it daily for updates. If you looked outside, you could see students running across campus, faces reddened by the cold, on the lookout for the admirers who'd summoned them to coffee shops, libraries, the old Mathematics building.

He paused mid-sip and furrowed his brow.

"'Coordinate,'" he repeated slowly. "What does it do?"

I explained it to him, bringing it up on my phone to show him the features.

Levi looked lost in thought as he swiped through the tutorial. "Y/N, what does the name of this app mean to you?" he asked.

"It's supposed to be a play on words. Coordinate, like (x,y), but also 'to coordinate,' as in organize, bring together, cooperate...at least, that's what I've been told."

"Who do you believe is being organized? And who is doing the organizing?"

I thought it was fairly obvious. For the former question, the students who would be in love were being led towards each other. As for the latter, the app created the conditions for a quasi-serendipitous meeting: the right location, the right people. It was non-human and disembodied. It had no opinions and experienced no satisfaction as a result of successful matchmaking.

"I think it's just meant to create the right conditions for love. And love is...” I paused. Levi was looking at me with curiosity. “Love is intention disguised as accident," I said. "We do everything in our power to make it happen, but then pretend it was coincidence. It creates the impression of scarcity, like it can't be replicated."

"And so, what do you think of this concept—an anonymous confession of love leading, for the first time, to actual results?"

"I suppose what I think doesn't matter, when everyone on campus believes in it." I met his eyes. "But I think that when you have a crush, it's like you can finally root for yourself. It's thrilling. It's not something you'd easily give up by opening yourself up to rejection, or honestly worse, having your feelings actually reciprocated."

"It's better to have a dream than to see it actually realized, isn't it? What comes after is difficult to face."

"Personally, I think it'd be nice to have someone I liked notice me."

He smiled. "Whoever designed this app would probably agree with you."

"Are you curious about who they are?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "It doesn't matter. If it's a student, I think I'd rather not know."

 _Still,_ I thought, _you've been noticed, Eren._

"So, what about you, Levi? Are you the type who prefers dreams?" Over what? Taking chances? Moving on?

He was silent for a moment. "I guess I should uphold my end of the bargain. You know, when I made you that promise, I didn’t think you’d actually take it seriously—let alone score in the top _five_ of the class.”

Well, I hadn't seen that coming.

"Let me tell you something strange," the professor said, closing his laptop.

"What is it?" All around us, the office seemed the grow closer. I will never forget what he said to me then, hurriedly, fearfully, looking straight down at the carpet.

"I have these visions, these waking dreams. But it feels like the time in between is the real dream. It's like we've all met before, a long time ago—or was it far in the future? There is so much violence. I am leading children to their deaths. I lose someone dear to me. I feel like I am stuck in the moment of collision, about to be thrown through the windshield, a moment that lasts forever. Through the glass, I can see everyone running towards me, and they're smiling at me with tears in their eyes. And then suddenly I am here, and maybe I am giving a lecture or sitting right here in this office...and I remember it all like little more than a childhood sunburn."

I wanted to dismiss it all as just the thing he said it could be—a bad recurring dream, the kind that lingers in wakefulness. But it didn't seem like that at all. As he spoke, it was like he was disappearing before my eyes.

"These aren't dreams that I'd ever want to bring to life. I'm afraid of what they mean." He lifted his head. "But for some reason, everything keeps coming back to a single point, a coordinate."

"The app?" He shook his head.

"A person—a boy, standing at the center of a million paths, alone. But I don't know his face. It sounds crazy, but when the dreams first started, I thought it might be Erwin, so I followed him. Truthfully, I didn't care that much about growing TitanBase. I had shitty childhood and I just wanted to make the kinds of games where kids could go and not be hurt by anything, where they could have what I didn't. But Erwin wanted to see how far we could take things—that was where we didn't see eye to eye. And then..."

Slowly, Levi opened the bottom drawer of his desk. Inside, I saw the familiar gleam of a first gen ODM rig, only it looked even more inelegant—a nest of wires, roughly sanded 3D-printed parts, and a mask that seemed too heavy to wear. He picked it up.

"You said just now, 'intention disguised as accident.' I've been trying to escape its design for fifteen years, but I can't outrun it. I keep wondering if I'm in control of anything at all."

"I don't understand."

" _This_ is the dream I can't wake from," he said, holding the past in his hands.

-

_"What would you do if they were gone?”_

“I would do anything to see them again,” I had said to Eren that hazy morning as we lay together. I wasn't thinking too hard about my answer, but I felt sure of my words as I was saying them. A world without Hange wouldn't make sense. Up would be down, wrong would be right, and the sun would never rise again.

“And if that were no longer possible?”

“I probably couldn’t move forward. I’d be stuck where they’d left me.”

“You would give up your freedom so easily?” I sensed the tension in his voice, low and hoarse.

As I closed my eyes, I saw Levi's cold, distant stare resurface in the back of my mind. I didn't have an answer. But I suppose we don’t often have the will to hold onto freedom if we can't have it with the ones we love. And I had no doubt that Levi loved Erwin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To everyone who subscribed/left kudos up till now: I'm so thrilled to have you on board. I've really enjoyed writing this story so far and I'd love to hear your feedback <3


	7. Favorite

What, then, did Eren love?

At some point, fifteen years ago, Erwin and Levi had assembled the first ODM rig in their dorm room. It was in the middle of the night in the spring of their senior year. Their classmates were out enjoying their final semester at the local dive bar, but Levi was putting the final touches on the code, compiling it over and over again, seeing the error count go down, then up, then down again.

Finally, Erwin put a hand on Levi's shoulder to steady them both, then placed the headset clumsily over Levi's eyes, getting his unwashed hair caught in the velcro. After you, he'd said devilishly. When the program started, there was a burst of light, knocking Levi out cold. He woke up in five minutes, before the paramedics arrived. They checked his heart rate, his blood pressure—nothing was wrong, although his pupils wouldn't dilate for hours after. In the weeks that followed, they were worried he might go blind, develop seizures, or something else befitting a lab casualty, but nothing seemed to sound the alarm.

The dreams started soon after that. But of course, Levi didn't share them with anyone, not even Erwin.

I knew, of course, what it was like to have the kind of friend who was smart enough to make me feel envious and infatuated in one tangle of emotion. Knowing what I did about their rivalry that accidentally became camaraderie, it wasn't much of a stretch to assume that Levi's dreams might've been related to the way the closest thing he had to a best friend was becoming a stranger as their company took off, with Erwin as the CEO. As their success grew, so did their differences of opinion. And then, with Erwin's untimely death came complicated feelings: grief, chaos, and something akin to relief.

If I were Levi, I would certainly do what he did to get away from my own thoughts: sell the company. Wash my hands of it all. Make it so that their names would be stricken from the record. Levi would be set for life, as would Erwin's parents (the man had few next of kin—he had no siblings and wasn't married). It's what he did afterward, coming back to his alma mater to teach, that didn't make sense. Why return to the wasteland of his youth, where everything would remind him of what he lost? What could possibly be left for him here? Or maybe it was as he said—he felt a saintly urge to spend his retirement mentoring the next generation of VR engineers?

As I watched Levi stare longingly at the crude ODM rig in his hands, it occurred to me that people needed to be drunk on something in order to live, and for Levi and his haunting dreams—whatever they were, really—that something was the sheer force of Erwin's life, which, like a black hole, seemed to pull everything towards him.

Levi met my gaze. "Sorry," he said. "I rambled on a lot. I'm not crazy, so don't go telling people—"

"I won't." Without thinking, I held his hands in mine and lowered them, carrying the ODM rig, back into the drawer. "I'm the one who should be sorry. For pressuring you into sharing all of that with me."

"I don't say things I don't mean. You won the bet. Just wish you'd try as hard on your mock interviews."

I winced. The professor was back. He closed the drawer. For a moment, we looked at each other in complete silence.

"Levi."

"Yes?"

"I have someone in my life who, at times, I feel I am on the verge of losing. We didn't seem on equal footing to begin with. But everyday I work hard to be closer to them, and that's enough for me. Does that make sense?"

"I thought you said you'd rather be noticed."

"I didn't say I wasn't. But I don't demand anything more."

Levi reached out and gently brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. He glanced at my lips. "It's a lot for us to bear, isn't it?" I leaned instinctively into his touch.

His other hand fell to my thigh, right at the hem of my skirt. My heart rate accelerated as I brought my fingertips to the bruise-like depression under his eyes.

"What's keeping you up at night, Levi?"

"Wouldn't you like to know."

He kissed me then, briefly, like he was considering the taste. I caught my breath as he leaned forward to again press his lips against mine, now coaxing his tongue into my mouth. I felt like I was everywhere and nowhere in this small office darkening in the late afternoon, barely lit now by the warm light of the single lamp on his desk because he hated the overhead. I wanted to ask myself what we were doing when I thought we had just spoken, more or less, about unrequited love for other people, but he had tangled his hand in my hair and was kissing me deeper.

He pulled me into his lap so that my back faced him, breaking away for a moment long enough for me to study the new brightness in his eyes as he looked up at me through his lashes.

"I can't help but feel a bit guilty," he said, before wrapping his arms around me. He lowered his head to my neck and sucked tenderly.

"You probably should," I said, squeezing the armrest of the chair at the sensation.

He stroked my inner thigh, covered only by a pair of thin tights, with his thumb. "The feeling has passed," he whispered into my ear.

One hand traveled up to the bare skin of my lower abdomen, right beneath the waistline of my skirt, then back down between my legs. The other came up my sweater to lift my bra and knead my breasts. He caressed my clit with the lightest of motions through the layers of fabric, quietly listening to my breath quicken with his ear resting in the crook of my neck.

Though it was dark outside, and few people would be wandering in front of this building at night, I became acutely aware that we were facing the narrow window where the kettle sat. I felt him harden beneath me and shifted my weight experimentally. He groaned.

"Stop that. Unless you want us to fuck in this office."

"Is that not where this was going?" At my quip, made without the slightest thought of consequences, he lifted me up onto the desk and tugged the tights off my legs, careful not to rip them.

"I don't know what's going on anymore," he said, before reaching up again for my panties. I lifted my sweater over my head.

Then, there I was, sitting barely clothed on the cool wood of his desk, only a miniskirt hiked up around my waist to cover my dripping pussy. Levi stood up, and though it was dark in the room, I saw his cock straining against the front of his slacks. I unbuckled his belt, reached in, and held in my hand the long, hot cock that sprang free. Levi gasped, placing his hands on the desk on either side of me, bracing himself.

I ran my fingertips over the soft skin of the head, reveling in the sound of him groaning with need. Then I stroked him slowly, finding a rhythm.

"Fuck," he said, grabbing my hand. "I don't have a condom."

Before I could answer, he crouched so that he was eye-level with the desk and between my legs. "Do you have anywhere to be tomorrow?" he asked.

"I don't have class until the afternoon."

He circled my clit with his tongue. "Perfect," he said, sounding muffled. He drove his tongue far into my pussy, then sucked hard. "Let me do this, and then I'll take you home with me?" It was hardly phrased as a question.

I moaned loudly as he continued to suck. I couldn't believe what was happening, but here I was, getting eaten out at school by my famous professor. Warmth began to spread from my core to my toes. I grabbed the hair on the back of his head.

"Yes," I breathed, as the high rolled through my brain like fog. He looked up at me with flushed cheeks and licked his lips.

"Good girl," he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said I would update every Saturday, but I skipped last week :'( I had a lot of work to do (gotta pay the bills) and also moved! I intend to keep the sched moving forward, so hope you'll bear with me!


	8. Phase

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a playlist for Levi:  
> http://www.youtube.com/watch_videos?video_ids=XY61DafwJsw,ynbxNLnazds,iBViIpAPLZs,LtVnLCzCHeI,KMx5cKwfi-w,yNNMKN9BUmU,YJAD_bKHtBM,Dwzk-XZxZ4k,GelJFFhpmzA,P5kV5nKQ670

I think I really would have gone with him, if it had not been for Eren.

He was standing in front of the engineering building in the faint light from inside, wearing a beat-up puffer coat, unzipped, over a t-shirt. Levi, who had been walking ahead of me as to not cause suspicion, noticed him before I did and had come to a stop. Eren looked at him with narrowed eyes. I looked down and saw that he was wearing only slides on his bare feet.

"Hey, _Professor_ ," said Eren, releasing a cloud of his breath into the air.

"Hello, Eren. What are you doing here so late?"

"Wanted to see if I could catch you during office hours. Looks like I just missed you."

"Come by on Thursday." Levi's voice was calm, hands concealed in the pockets of his coat. "Or shoot me an email if it's urgent."

"Don't worry. It's not," said Eren. He turned to me, like he was noticing me for the first time. "But it's a good thing I ran into you, Y/N. I wanted to talk to you about the project."

Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. Levi raised his brows. "I'll leave you guys to it, then. Be safe getting home." And then he was walking away.

The whole thing played out so naturally, I wondered whether the events leading up to this moment had been just a daydream. Eren was studying my face. "What were you doing with Levi?" he said, asking the one question I'd hoped he wouldn't.

"Going over the midterm results," I heard myself say in a way that sounded unconvincing even to my own ears.

But Eren only cocked his head. "If you're wondering why you got those points off on the final question, it was Armin. He's all by-the-book. I'll have you know I fought him on it."

"Not a problem." I pulled my coat more tightly over my chest. Levi was already too far down college walk for me to make him out in the darkness.

"I'm sure. You're in really great shape for the start of the semester. In _such_ good shape, that I'm hoping you'll let me recruit you."

"Recruit me?"

"For Coordinate." His hand felt for the chain around his neck.

"Isn't it already built?" There it was—that wide, ineffable stare.

"Yes, and no." He took a step closer, eyes darting around us as though we weren't alone. "Will you cooperate?"

I took a step back. "I don't make vague promises."

"Then hear me out."

-

From the looks on the faces of the Garrison members in the sitting room, Eren wasn't exactly welcome there. Their eyes followed him as he led me to the stairs. One of them, who recognized me as Hange's companion from the party, greeted me with a hesitant wave.

His room was lit again by the bright LEDs, this time a deep indigo. My eyes took a few moments to adjust as he closed the door behind us and removed his coat, letting it fall haphazardly to the floor, though there was a hook on the door.

Before I could say anything, he had captured my lips with his. His hands fell from my face to my waist, then settled at my hip. I felt the wall meet my back as he deepened the kiss, placing a knee between my legs. The same place Levi's mouth had been minutes ago.

"I thought you were hiring me for something decent," I said, gasping.

"I am," he said, nipping at my neck before pulling away. He pulled the elastic from his hair and ran a hand through it. "Now I can focus." But could I?

He sat down on his bed and pulled his computer onto his lap. "You didn't come to TA office hours today," he said.

"No," I agreed, sitting beside him.

The subject died there.

"I wasn't sure I was going to do this—but I'm ramping up the project. There isn't much time left, and I need people who are good on the fundamentals, or at least, quick learners."

"If you're talking about ML, there's probably a senior in the department like you with more experience and frankly, more free time on their hands. Hell, the other TAs would be more useful. Why not go to them?"

He breathed out sharply through his nose. "I told you last time that my friends didn't approve of what I was doing. I was talking about them—they're out."

I thought of Jean's scowl, Mikasa's watchful eyes. The way Armin had looked at Eren that afternoon in the TA room, his older brother demeanor melting away into a cold, reproachful stare.

"That's another thing. I still haven't heard yet what this is really about. Are you iterating on Coordinate? What's controversial about that?"

More than anything, I couldn't square what he could possibly want with _me_. We barely knew each other. The way he was roping me into this had the air of a wannabe student entrepreneur thinking they've got the next Facebook on their hands. There was the barely concealed excitement, the shitty MVP, and the clumsy pitch from founder to potential co-founder. All we were missing was an arrogant business major wanting to become CEO of Something.

At the same time, it was all so impersonal. He'd seen my grades, maybe even my resume, and made a calculated choice to stop me today. Hooking up may be just another piece of his decision matrix. I knew nothing about Eren—just that he was good at coding or at least motivated enough to do it outside of class, and estranged from ostensibly the only people who cared about him. And yet, though it seemed on brand for him to act selfishly, I couldn't describe him as impulsive. There was something else that he needed from me for whatever this was, and plenty of things he wasn't going to be transparent about.

I watched him log into his IDE and select the directory titled "Coordinate - ODM." A pop-up asked for multi-factor authentication, to which he typed in a 12-character password and inserted the key into a port on the machine. Moments later, the directory populated with files.

"A bit secretive for a campus dating app," I commented.

"It's good practice," he replied. "But you'll see why."

I studied the screen. "You're doing this in C++?" I asked, curious as to why he wouldn't use a more popular framework for a fairly straightforward mobile app.

"The game engines weren't as advanced back then."

"Back then?"

Eren closed his eyes, like he was steeling himself. "I'll start from the beginning," he said.

"My dad was one of the early employees at TitanBase, way before Marley, Inc. acquired it. He helped the founders refine their prototype into the first-gen ODM rig that came out when we were kids. Then, I guess, his head got too big for me and my mom, because he left us right after. Took most of his belongings with him and dipped. But he left a box in the basement with an encrypted hard drive and this key." He removed the chain from his neck and dangled it between us.

"Couldn't get in for the longest time—I had the key, but no password. But then I got a letter in the mail. It was completely unintelligible, just a series of numbers and symbols. But when I saw it, I knew it had to be the second authenticator. I didn't know who sent it. And when I got access to these files, I wasn't sure what I was hoping for—some kind of dirt on my dad? Something so important that he'd have to come back for it? Instead, I got the source code for something called 'Coordinate.'"

I shook my head. "I thought you and Hange built the app yourselves?" How was Hange involved in all of this? What did Hitch know?

"Coordinate is an extremely efficient machine learning model that we didn't come up with ourselves, and definitely didn't need for a stupid app like this. Have a look." He showed me the screen, and even scrolling quickly through it, I knew that what I was seeing was entirely too complex to build a glorified Facebook group. "It's true that Hange and I built a mobile app for campus dating. But that's because we needed an excuse to test this code out on a substantial amount of real-time data to see what it could do.

"This model is currently being passively trained on the hundreds of interactions between students, their romantic preferences, their personal identifiers, and their location data through Coordinate. But the model itself seems to be able to easily handle hundreds of other types of inputs, including behavioral, environmental and biometric data. Sounds more relevant for VR software, right? Well, while dissecting the code, we realized it can output code for VR assets, obviously optimized for ODM VR hardware."

"So...what, you're spying on the student body? Committing serious privacy violations? Why?"

"Think about it. Not much can be done with just the limited data that pass through our app's servers, but imagine what this model could create after it's learned from all kinds of data streaming in from every ODM user in the world: hyperrealistic assets that are refined automatically, with minimal—if any—input from designers or engineers, ad infinitum. AI-trained, intelligent NPCs that behave like you and me without a single line of human-generated code. It's a money printer for a company like TitanBase.

"But it's not just about what the model can do, it's about what it sees. Every ODM is a window into the user's soul. It watches your quirks, your reactions, your every breath. It knows you better than you know yourself—and by default, so does whoever controls TitanBase technology. Every ODM has this vulnerability—it's designed that way. When Marley, Inc. acquired TitanBase in 2028, we thought it was just another a big company buying out the competition before it gained too much market share, betting obscene amounts of money on absorbing the IP and the talent. But if you wanna know what I think, Marley saw the opportunity to obtain not only the most immersive VR rig on the market, but also the most invasive and widespread surveillance system."

I sat back and looked at the ceiling. "Would people use ODM if they knew this?"

"There was that hack back in 2022 where about 50,000 people got their personal information stolen. There was media buzz about it, but it didn't kill investor interest. People don't care that they're being watched. All they care about is getting a top of the line VR experience, and TitanBase delivers."

"Holy shit."

"So you tell me, why do you think he—Levi, the guy grading your exams—let it all go?"


	9. Guard

When I got home that evening, Hange was lying on the couch, hands interlocked over their chest, therapy-style. The Office was playing on the TV, but it was muted. Hange glanced up at me as I locked the door behind me.

"Haven't seen much of you lately," they said.

I set my bag on the floor and knelt beside the couch. "Were you ever going to tell me what you were up to?"

Hange tilted their head to face me. "What do you mean?" they asked.

I took a deep breath. "Why bother to tell me about Coordinate, pretend not to know Eren, and take me to that party, just to tell me a fraction of the truth about it all?"

They didn't blink. "I didn't think it would concern you. You've been so busy with recruitment and acing Levi's class and all."

"Eren told me he wanted me in on this _because_ I've been killing it in ML."

" _Eren_? Told you _what_?"

"We've met. A couple times."

"Okay," Hange said, propping their chin on an elbow. "I don't know what Eren's said to you, about the project, about whatever, but if he led with the right things, then you know we could be in some deep shit—not just your run-of-the-mill IP theft. I didn't think you wanted to be a part of that."

"What," I said. "You thought I couldn't handle a felony or two?"

"Frankly, yeah. Look, even I can see I'm way in over my head with this. I thought you were all about stability and climbing the corporate ladder. I mean, it makes sense. I know how hard you worked just to be here. I didn't want to fuck it up for you."

Hange took my hand. "Eren is actually crazy. The only thing in that boy's head is Coordinate. I don't think you should get involved."

"Then why are you helping him?"

"Because this is the most interesting thing that's happened to me in my entire life, Y/N!" said Hange, raising their voice. "I don't care about getting a job at a FAANG company or a hedge fund or whatever. This technology could change everything."

I sat back on my heels. What did I want? I wanted to graduate without incident. Coast through my early twenties working as a SWE and get rich. Found a successful startup with Hange before thirty and get even richer. Maybe these things wouldn't come to fruition as expected, but spending both the mundane and exciting parts of adult life with Hange would always make it into the plans. The fact that they didn't see it the same way was dawning on me with agonizing speed.

But could I have expected anything less from someone like Hange?

"You said this technology could change everything. But what if it could ruin everything?"

"What would you do if there were a gun sitting on the table in front of you? If it were me, I'd pick it up and ask questions later." Hange squeezed my hand. "I'd rather not leave it to someone else to pull the trigger—and if we're lucky, no one will have to."

"What about Eren?"

"I think of him as the gun."

I studied Hange's bitten nails, the thick gold band of their family ring around their left index finger, the way they rolled their sleeves up to the elbow. I looked steadily into their eyes, trapped behind the glint of their glasses, and felt the warmth of their hand on mine. I understood. I could still trust Hange's undiluted curiosity to be just that—curiosity untouched by ego or ulterior motive. But neither of us really knew Eren—where he came from, how he became estranged from his friends, what caused him to be obsessed with Coordinate. Of course, we had our guesses, but we couldn't see through his aloof strangeness. Part of our task would be to watch him, to keep him in check.

Was I ready for that? Or was it my own stubbornness that drove me to say my next few words?

"I can't believe you thought I was too vanilla to commit cyber crime," I sighed, getting up and walking over to the kitchen. I cracked open the handle of Svedka, half-empty from the last kickback, and took a swig, squeezing my eyes closed as the piss-warm liquid burned my throat on its way down.

"What the fuck?" I heard Hange say. I heard both confusion and mirth in their voice.

"Call Eren. We need to talk about his dad."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's a bit short! I am super busy these days, but I'm excited to get into some interesting stuff in the coming chapters...


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